Notícias em inglês´- 20 de Abril de 2007

Canberra Times - Friday, April 20, 2007

Opinion: Presidential Election Results a Worrying Portent for East Timor
George Quinn

East Timor's National Electoral Commission has confirmed that a run-off will be held on May 9 between the first-round front runners in the country's presidential election.

Francisco Guterres (known as "Lu Olo"), supported by powerful ruling party Fretilin, will face Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos Horta, an "independent" who will be widely supported by anti-Fretilin voters. But at the local district level an ominous trend has emerged in the first round of voting. The pattern of voting is casting a shadow over the second round and over the parliamentary election due on June 30.

According to interim figures, Francisco Guterres dominated polling in the three eastern-most districts of the country, easily scoring more votes there than all other candidates combined. In Viqueque, for example, he scored 20,512 votes, drubbing his nearest rival Ramos Horta who managed just 5627 votes.

But in the west of the country it was a totally different story. In districts along the border with Indonesian West Timor, and in the Oecussi enclave, Francisco Guterres scarcely troubled the scorer. In Bobonaro district Guterres collected just 4701 of the 35,426 votes cast (these are interim figures, but I think they will be close to correct). In neighbouring Ainaro he appears to have scored 2428 of 22,154 votes cast.

In Covalima, Oecussi and Ermera he did a little better but averaged only about 20 per cent of the vote.

In short, voting patterns appear to confirm a deep cleavage between east and west in East Timor. Between March and June last year when the nation's army fractured into hostile halves and Dili erupted into gang violence, the trouble was widely attributed to hostility between the country's easterners and westerners.

East-west resentment still simmers in the streets and refugee camps of Dili, kept in check only by the watchful presence of United Nations police and Australian troops.

In the first round of the presidential election, the Fretilin candidate attracted just under 30 per cent of the total vote. If Fretilin's support in the parliamentary election remains at a similar level (and this appears likely) the party will be decimated in parliament, possibly clinging to as few as 20 seats in the new 65 seat assembly (down from 55 seats in the current 88 seat assembly). Of course, it is by no means certain that voting in the parliamentary election will exactly mirror the presidential result, but there can be little doubt that Francisco Guterres will lose, and lose heavily, to Ramos Horta in the second round of the presidential election. And if the subsequent parliamentary election can be kept clean, Fretilin will be thrown from the back of Timor's exuberantly bucking mass of voters.

Fretilin, the ruling party since independence in 2002, richly deserves the hiding it is about to get.

While former prime minister Mari Alkatiri pursued cautious fiscal policies, locking up oil and gas revenues in trust funds that will yield steady long-term income, he failed dismally to address his nation's more immediate problems. To a shocking degree, the rural infrastructure (market buildings, country roads, clinics, homes) destroyed in the militia mayhem of 1999 remains untouched. In Dili, unemployment is the norm for the many thousands of young men who have flocked into the city since independence. It is their frustration that ignited much of the violence in the city last year.

The rank and file of Fretilin supporters, especially the hard-liners at the centre of government, won't take kindly to election defeat. For them, Fretilin and independent East Timor go together. After the sacking of westerners from the East Timor Defence Force last year, the army is now overwhelmingly staffed by soldiers from the east. They have been humiliated by Alfredo Reinado leader of the sacked westerners who remains at large in the mountains of the interior revelling in his Scarlet Pimpernel popularity among the disaffected western youth of Dili.

A Fretilin loss in the second round of the presidential election may be tolerable (just) to Fretilin hard-liners.

After all, the presidency is a largely symbolic-ceremonial office, and since independence they have learned to live with a non-Fretilin president in Xanana Gusmao. But real power resides in parliament, and the parliamentary election will be fiercely fought. All the signs are that in the parliamentary election Fretilin is unlikely to significantly raise its current 30 per cent of voter support.

Its only hope of a good result is to keep the turnout of anti-Fretilin voters low. There is, then, a real chance of intimidation and rough-house tactics in the campaign and in polling on June 30, and if this happens it will have to happen in the country's west.

To this volatile mix add east-west ethnic hatreds and guns. The eastern-dominated army has strong Fretilin allegiances. If Fretilin comes a cropper in the parliamentary election, or if it attempts to seize the election by intimidation and manipulation, it is possible that we will see renewed tension across the country. By July there may well be a face-off between a defeated Fretilin with its army allies, and a western-dominated, non-Fretilin government. Even with peacekeeping troops and UN police thick on the streets this could be a formula for trouble.

- George Quinn heads the South-East Asia Centre in the Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. He was an international election observer in the recent first round of East Timor's presidential election.


Jakarta Post - April 20, 2007

Will Timor Leste polls turn violent?
Abdul Khalik, Jakarta

Just burn one house, and the whole of Timor Leste will fall into chaos.

That's how observers described the fragility of Asia's youngest nation after rival security forces clashed in Dili, sparking gang warfare that killed 37 people and forced more than 150,000 others to flee their homes in May last year.

Violence has reportedly broken out almost every day since then, with machete-wielding gangs roaming the streets, setting homes on fire and shooting each other. More than 3,000 international peacekeeping troops, mostly from neighboring Australia, struggled to keep order.

Against this backdrop, it is understood that international and local observers were quite surprised by the peaceful process of the April 9 presidential election.

They praised it as a great achievement of the Timor Leste people and a clear sign of their maturity in democracy.

While the peaceful election should make Timor Leste's people proud, the United Nations and international observers, including the European Union, should remain cautious and careful that the worst period is yet to come.

The subsiding violence has a lot to do with Timor Leste's political elites who tend to have a "wait and see" attitude. Whoever ignited and was involved in the violence that hit the country over the last year is waiting for who will win, not only the presidential election but also the parliamentary election.

These groups will also want to see if both elections are won fairly or unfairly.

In other words, the semblance of peace during the campaign period until the vote counting shows that the violence that preceded the election process was not community-based in nature and beyond the control of ordinary people. It was the elite's struggle for power. The Timor Leste people as a whole desperately want to live in peace and build a better future for their children.

With the presidential election stretched to a runoff between Fretilin's Francisco Guterres and Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta on May 9, the immediate threat to national stability could come from supporters of the Democrat Party's Fernando Araujo Lasama, who finished third.

Lasama has shown his disappointment with the vote count and has said he suspected many irregularities and fraud had tarnished the poll. He has said he will challenge the election result unless his demand for a ballot recount is heeded.

Democrat Party supporters, mostly youths who are quite militant, loathe both Fretilin and Ramos-Horta. During the campaign period, they often clashed with Fretilin's supporters, leaving some of them injured.

Lasama's supporters have always blamed Fretilin, the ruling party, for the prolonged crisis of the past five years and are demanding a change of guard. They don't like Ramos-Horta for ordering the arrest of Maj. Alfredo Reinado, the widely-supported rebel leader among Timor Leste youth.

Many have suggested that the imminent threat of violence could be prevented if Ramos-Horta and Lasama could reach a deal on the issue of fugitive Reinado and vote for Ramos-Horta in the run-off. Otherwise, the disappointment could accumulate and explode at any time.

The next potential threat will loom after the 9 May run-off in which the presidential winner will be decided. During an interview with The Jakarta Post, Fretilin's most influential figure, Mari Alkatiri, made it clear that the party was seeking the post heavily.

"Because we can work with whoever becomes the prime minister or whichever party leads the parliament as long as we secure the presidential post," he said.

Although Alkatiri has made it clear that his party members will not perpetrate violence should they lose the presidential election, it remains to be seen how effective it will be in restraining certain militant wings in the party.

If Ramos-Horta wins the presidency, and Fretilin wins the parliamentary election, and subsequently the prime ministerial post, then Timor Leste will emulate the unproductive five years under Xanana Gusmao as the president and Alkatiri as the prime minister with a Fretilin-controlled parliament.

To make matter worse, the same groups that sparked the recent violence will be back into action.

Fretilin will celebrate a double win in presidential and parliamentary elections. But what will happen if they lose both? Will supporters of the party, the symbol of independence struggle, accept the defeat and not resort to violence?

In any case, the Timor Leste political elite must learn from their people, who have shown their patience and maturity in practicing democracy. They managed to put national interests behind short-sighted political goals.

- The writer is a journalist at The Jakarta Post.



ABC - Friday, April 20, 2007. 2:00pm (AEST)

Unsuccessful candidates appeal against E Timor election results
By Anne Barker

Three of the losing candidates in East Timor's presidential election have lodged a formal appeal against the results in court.

East Timor's Electoral Commission has formally announced the results of voting in last week's election.

No candidate won a majority, so the two frontrunners, Jose Ramos-Horta and Fretilin candidate Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres, will contest a runoff election in early May.

But the results allowed a 24-hour window for candidates to appeal.

Now three of the losing candidates, Fernando de Araujo, Lucia Lobato and Francisco Xavier do Amaral, have done so, protesting to Dili's District Court.

They have alleged widespread manipulation of the vote on polling day and other serious irregularities.

They want the court to declare the first round result invalid.


United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - 19 Apr 2007

East Timor – Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #1 (FY 2007)

U.S. Agency For International Development Bureau For Democracy, Conflict, And Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) Office Of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)

Background

- In April 2006, the commander of East Timor's armed forces, with the support of the former Prime Minister, dismissed nearly 600 soldiers who were protesting alleged discrimination against military personal from the western part of the country. The dismissals exacerbated existing political and social tensions, and resulted in riots, confrontations between the police and military forces, and subsequent clashes involving youth gangs due to the absence of law and order. Approximately 150,000 East Timorese were displaced at the height of the violence, according to the U.N. and humanitarian monitoring organizations.

- The unrest prompted the deployment of international peacekeeping forces in May 2006, and the establishment of the U.N. Integrated Mission and an international police force in August 2006.

NUMBERS AT A GLANCE SOURCE
Total Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) 100,000 OCHA(1) – March 14, 2007
IDPs in Dili camps 30,000 OCHA – March 14, 2007


USAID HUMANITARIAN FUNDING PROVIDED TO DATE (FY 2006 AND FY 2007)
USAID/OFDA Assistance to East Timor: $1,970,836
USAID/FFP(2) Assistance to East Timor: $3,400,000
Total USAID Humanitarian Assistance to East Timor: $5,370,836

Current Situation

- The U.N. estimates that as of March 2007, approximately 100,000 people remain displaced, with 30,000 IDPs located in camps near the capital city of Dili, and 70,000 living with host families in other districts. In January 2007, violence and arson displaced approximately 5,000 people in Dili, according to OCHA.

- On April 9, 2007, East Timorese residents voted for a new president in the first locally-organized election since independence from Indonesia in 2002. Foreign election observers, including representatives from the European Union, reported the election was generally orderly and peaceful. A run-off election will occur on May 8.

(1) U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(2) USAID's Office of Food for Peace

Relatório na íntegra em:

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/DHRV-72F5E6/$File/Full_Report.pdf